24 May, 2018

We,
the undersigned, thank you for your speech on 8th May 2018, pledging
the European Union’s intention to remain steadfast in its
commitment to the historic accord concluded between Iran and the
E3/EU+3, the so-called Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
Too often, politicians have inclined to patronise and admonish, but,
instead, you opted for a “universal language” of respect and
dialogue. You proclaimed that “[t]his deal belongs to each and
every one of us”, and that it enjoins us not to “let
anyone dismantle this agreement”. But despite such salutary
remarks, in the aftermath of the Trump administration’s public
announcement to withdraw from the JCPOA and re-impose sanctions on
Iran, the survival of the agreement is far from assured.

The
majority of Iranians have demonstrated their heartfelt support for
this hard-won diplomatic accord. They have shown their support
through their two-time election of a president promising to initiate
constructive dialogue with the world, patiently awaiting the outcome
of a long and arduous series of negotiations despite the debilitating
impact of sanctions on their everyday lives, celebrating in the
streets of major Iranian cities when the JCPOA was successfully
agreed upon, and finally, announcing their approbation of the
agreement in over 100 cities across the globe in the weeks and months
that followed.

In
your speech you stated that “the European Union will remain
committed to the continued full and effective implementation of the
Nuclear Deal”. We wholeheartedly welcome this commitment, but
as you are fully apprised, it is crucial that Europe is able to
discharge its international obligations and ensure, despite U.S.
sanctions, that Iran and its people enjoy the full economic and
political dividends promised according to not only the letter, but
also the spirit of the JCPOA. The IAEA has repeatedly verified Iran’s
compliance and honouring of its commitments under the agreement, and
this ought to be reciprocated in turn.

In
an increasingly unstable global climate and ever-more precarious “age
of extremes”, it is essential that one of the great diplomatic
successes of the 21st century not find itself carelessly squandered.
By your own estimation it took some twelve years for this agreement
to be reached. If Europe in coordination with its Russian and Chinese
partners prove unable to salvage the JCPOA, the likelihood of further
instability in the region and even war increases exponentially.

While
the JCPOA showed that diplomacy is possible, in view of recent events
and President Trump’s reneging on the accord, the message to the
world shouldn’t be that peace is inevitably transient and
short-lived. For every one of us who is committed to fostering peace
through reasonable dialogue and mutual understanding, preserving the
integrity and viability of the JCPOA is of inestimable importance.
Trust in the European Union, UN Security Council and wider
international community is at stake, as well as their credibility to
tackle many of the enormous challenges which lie ahead in the years
to come.

The
Iranian people backed peace and diplomacy. Now it is the
responsibility of the international community to demonstrate that
they made the right decision and that the promises that were made
will be carried out and effectively realised. Failure is not an
option. The alternative path is simply too costly, not only for the
present generation, but for posterity as well.

Ecuadorian
President Lenin Moreno has made no secret of his annoyance with the
man he refers to a “hacker,” calling Assange “a stone in his
shoe” as Ecuador seeks to restructure itself as a trusted ally of
the United States.

by
Elliott Gabriel

Part
2 - An attack on Assange’s mental health

Sealed
off from the internet, phone calls, or outside visitors, the
46-year-old Assange is now faced with deteriorating health, an
inability to visit the hospital to treat chronic health maladies, and
conditions usually suffered by those held in solitary confinement.

Last
August, Assange explained to The New Yorker that he suffers from
bouts of anxiety and depression due to his isolation, often remaining
awake for anywhere between 18 and 22 hours per day: “The walls
of the Embassy are as familiar as the interior of my eyelids … I
see them, but I do not see them.”

Rafael
Correa — the former president of Ecuador, who extended asylum to
Assange in 2012 while the U.S., Britain and Sweden sought his
detention — has denounced the move as a blatant attempt to
psychologically torment the whistleblower. Speaking to The Intercept,
the popular former head of state noted: “Denial of visitors is a
clear violation of his rights. Once we give asylum to someone, we are
responsible for his safety, for ensuring humane living conditions.
Without communications to the outside world and visits from anyone,
the government is basically attacking Julian’s mental health.”

"The
smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit
the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate
within that spectrum." – Noam Chomsky

By
Manmeet Sahni

Part
5 - Questionable Statistics

Moreover,
the figures supporting Paez's argument in the Wall Street Journal
simply don't add up. Joe Emersberger breaks them down in the Green
Left Weekly: "According to a Colombian university study of
Venezuelan migration to Colombia, it averaged about 47,000 per year
from 2011–2014, then increased to 80,000 per year in 2015–16.

"U.S.
government data show migration from Venezuela to the United States
increasing from about 7,000 per year before 2013 to 28,000 per year
by 2015, including Venezuelans who have entered without
authorization.

"Between
2000 to 2013, the United States was the destination for about 30
percent of Venezuelan-born people who left to live abroad, according
to the World Bank figures.

"If
the Colombian university study and U.S. government data are accurate,
then the United States has been the destination for about 20 percent
of Venezuelan migrants after 2013. That would mean about 140,000
Venezuelans per year were leaving to live abroad by 2016.

"That
is not remotely comparable to the 5 million Syrians who fled the
country in the first five years following the civil war – and that
doesn't include over a million per year who fled their homes inside
Syria (the internally displaced)."

Western
media continue to dismiss the May 20 elections as a farce, despite
the fact they will be overseen by international experts and
organizations – including the African Union, the Caribbean
Community and the Latin American Council on Electoral Experts (CEELA)
– and involve one of the most technologically sophisticated voting
systems in the world.

With
just days to go until Venezuela chooses its next president,
luminaries across the continent are rightly petitioning to fight such
media bias and calling instead for "balanced information that
allows us to understand the complexity of the situation in
Venezuela."

The
Brussels/Berlin axis in the European Financial Dictatorship
(eurozone) has put itself in alarm mode again, this time due to what
appears to be a bigger threat for its iron, authoritarian model of
austerity and sado-monetarism. The threat comes from the new
eurosceptic coalition government in Italy, formed by the
anti-establishment Five Star Movement and the anti-immigrant Northern
League.

The
European Vice President, Valdis Dombrovskis, rushed to launch an
indirect threat against the new coalition in Italy, saying
that "We view it as important that the Italian government
remains on course in pursuing a responsible budget policy,"
and "We can only advise it to stay on course in terms of
economic and fiscal policies, to stimulate growth through structural
reforms and to keep the budget deficit under control,".
Warning shots also fired by the French Economy Minister Bruno Le
Maire.

Yet,
there
are signs that even bigger threats came from the
top destructive weapon of the European Financial Dictatorship, the
European Central Bank: “Rumors are rife that the
European Central Bank may use its regular bond buying to sway the
program of the new Italian government, but past data
provides little evidence it uses these purchases to intervene in
times of political turmoil. Italian bond yields have risen
sharply on fears that a populist government will clash with Brussels
over spending plans, and some have suggested the ECB may have reduced
purchases recently to send the new government a signal about
discipline. Traders see little evidence of this for now,
and Italian spreads over Germany actually narrowed on Tuesday,
suggesting that investors’ nervousness may be calming as the new
government provides clarity over its plans.”

Sounds
familiar?

Recall
that, the Greek political establishment collapsed with the rise of
SYRIZA in power, and the ECB was forced to proceed in an open
financial coup against Greece when the current PM,
Alexis Tsipras, decided to conduct a referendum on the catastrophic
measures imposed by the ECB, IMF and the European Commission, through
which the Greek people clearly rejected these measures, despite the
propaganda of terror inside and outside Greece. Due to the direct
threat from Mario Draghi and the ECB, who actually threatened to cut
liquidity sinking Greece into a financial chaos, Tsipras finally
forced to retreat, signing another catastrophic memorandum.

Yet,
this was not the first financial coup. While Greece was the major
victim of an economic war, Germany used its economic power and
control of the European Central Bank to impose unprecedented
austerity, sado-monetarism and neoliberal destruction through silent
financial coups in Ireland,
Italy
and Cyprus.

It has
been revealed that back in 2011, a certain mechanism of the political
and economic elite within and out of Italy, forced Berlusconi to
resign in order to be replaced by the technocratic puppet Mario Monti
to impose harsh austerity, as a key element of the neoliberal agenda.

As
described, the former Prime Minister, Romano Prodi, gave blessing to
Monti and a prophecy: "When
Italian spreads reach 300 units, you will be asked to govern."
Italian spreads finally surpassed the 300 units that Prodi predicted,
to reach 500. Italy was in face to face with the ghost of bankruptcy.
Either by populism, or by free choice, Berlusconi did not abide by
the orders of Germany. He became unpopular, as he challenged
austerity policies, so he had to be removed.

No
surprise that the head of the Bank of Italy at that time was (guess
who) ... Mario Draghi.

One year
later, Draghi, as the head of the ECB this time, will announce the
decision for unlimited
purchase of government bonds in eurozone. As
described back then “the ECB becomes a corresponding Fed in the
European area, “serving” the problematic economies that are
excluded from the bond markets, through the print of new money.
Therefore, the problematic economies will be loaded with more and
more debt which the ECB, i.e. the largest private European banks will
hold. Someone could argue that is not something new, since nations
were facing huge debts in previous years, because they were indebted
to banks through the excessive borrowing from the markets. But in
this case, there is an important difference that makes things much
worse: it is the cruel conditions imposed by the ECB to states that
need to buy money. States that are excluded from markets,
are now trapped within the neoliberal economic empire of the eurozone
and will be forced to follow new austerity measures every time they
need ECB to buy their bonds.”, which is exactly what
happened to Greece.

The trap mechanism was
completed. Anyone who dared to refuse austerity and sado-monetarism,
imposed by the Brussels/Berlin axis, through 'undesired' political
parties in power, would be delivered to the hands of the ECB regime
and would be forced to take all the painful measures, through
economic suffocation.

The new coalition in Italy
will certainly have to face this sinister mechanism (perhaps another
silent or open financial coup), in case that it will remain committed
to its promise to relief the Italian people from brutal austerity.

So, the next big question is:
how many more financial coups the European Financial Dictatorship is
willing to orchestrate in order to maintain austerity and
sado-monetarism inside the member-states?

Facebook
is hoping that a new alliance with the Atlantic Council — a leading
geopolitical strategy think-tank seen as a de facto PR agency for the
U.S. government and NATO military alliance – will not only solve
its “fake news” and “disinformation” controversy, but will
also help the social media monolith play “a positive role” in
ensuring democracy on a global level.

The new
partnership will effectively ensure that Atlantic Council will serve
as Facebook’s “eyes and ears,” according to a company press
statement. With its leadership comprised of retired military
officers, former policymakers, and top figures from the U.S. National
Security State and Western business elites, the Atlantic Council’s
role policing the social network should be viewed as a virtual
takeover of Facebook by the imperialist state and the council’s
extensive list of ultra-wealthy and corporate donors.

The
partnership is only the latest in a steady stream of announced plans
by the Menlo Park, California-based company to address controversy
surrounding its role in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The
company has been mired in scandal stemming from the allegations of
“election interference” carried out through the social network –
usually pinned on the Russian government and ranging from the use of
independent media to the theft of Facebook user data by political
consultancy firm Cambridge Analytica.

The
announcement should sound alarm bells when one considers the Atlantic
Council’s list of sponsors – including, but not limited to,
war-profiteering defense contractors; agencies aligned with
Washington and the Pentagon; Gulf Arab tyrants; major transnational
corporations; and such well-loved Western philanthropic brands as
Carnegie, Koch, Rockefeller, and Soros. Even the name of the group
itself is meant to evoke the North Atlantic Council, the highest
political decision-making body of North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Amazon’s
powerful new facial recognition technology automates mass government
surveillance and threatens individual freedom, according to the
American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

The
online retail giant has begun selling the big brother-like
technology, which it calls “Rekognition,” to law enforcement and
local government authorities across the United States.

The new
service can identify, track and analyze people in real time,
recognizing up to 100 people in a single image. The information it
collects can then be scanned against databases featuring tens of
millions of people, the ACLU said.

President
Nicolas Maduro said United States Chargé d’Affaires Todd Robinson
and head of political affairs Brian Naranjo have 48 hours to leave
Venezuela. Maduro says the decision to expel the pair is aimed at
defending Venezuela's sovereignty and in rejection of Washington's
interventionist policies against the country and its people.

"I
have declared him persona non grata, and I announce the exit of the
United States Chargé d'Affaires in 48 hours," Maduro said
of Todd Robinson during the official proclamation of his re-election.
He accused Robinson of being involved in "a military
conspiracy" against Venezuela saying the U.S. embassy had
been meddling in the military, economic and political issues, and
vowed to present evidence to the nation shortly.

"Neither
with conspiracies nor with sanctions will you hold Venezuela back,"
Maduro said, at the National Electoral Council's (CNE) headquarters
in downtown Caracas.

He said
that the government had given the embassy more than 20 warnings
regarding interference into Venezuelan internal affairs, but all had
fallen on deaf ears.

Maduro
announced the measures in a speech after receiving credentials from
the country’s National Electoral Council confirming his new
presidential mandate following his victory in Sunday’s election.

Maduro
said that Venezuela faces unconventional forms of war that seek to
colonize it again and destroy its democracy but the country and its
people have prevailed.

“A
miracle brings us here. How many obstacles we have overcome. The
maker of the miracle is the people of Venezuela, with their
strength,” Maduro told the crowd at the CNE. “Venezuela is
capable of overcoming any challenge, and has the democratic and
institutional maturity and strength of conscience.”

"It
is a reprisal for having democratically defeated the coup, boycott
against President Nicolás Maduro," Bolivia's president
reiterated.

Bolivian
President Evo Morales has rejected a new round of sanctions imposed
on Venezuela by the United States' after Nicolas Maduro was
re-elected as the country's president Sunday.

"We
condemn the unilateral decision that imposes a new economic blockade
to suffocate the Venezuelan people, in retaliation for having
defeated the coup, boycott against President Nicolas Maduro
democratically. Trump must understand that the world is not his
estate," Morales said in a tweet posted late Monday.

The U.S.
along with its right-wing European and Latin American allies have
repeatedly called Venezuela's elections a 'sham' before and after
Maduro won at the polls.

Morales'
remarks come after he congratulated Maduro on his re-election, and
praised it as a victory against foreign interventionism.

"It
is a reprisal for having democratically defeated the coup and boycott
against President Nicolás Maduro," Morales reiterated.

Over 20
million Venezuelans were called to the polls to elect their next
president, where Maduro won with 6,190,612 votes, with a 46 percent
voter turnout.

Ecuadorian
President Lenin Moreno has made no secret of his annoyance with the
man he refers to a “hacker,” calling Assange “a stone in his
shoe” as Ecuador seeks to restructure itself as a trusted ally of
the United States.

by
Elliott Gabriel

Part
1

For all
practical purposes, whistleblower and WikiLeaks founder Julian
Assange is now a prisoner in asylum at the Embassy of Ecuador in
London, facing the torture of near-total isolation from the outside
world and hanging by the thread of the Andean state’s dwindling
hospitality.

On
Thursday, the Australian – who, strangely enough, was given
Ecuadorian citizenship last December – faced a new layer of
precariousness atop his six-year refuge, when Ecuadorean President
Lenin Moreno ordered that additional security assigned to the
building be withdrawn.

According
to Ecuador’s government, the London Embassy will now have the same
level of security enjoyed by the other ambassadorial facilities the
Andean nation maintains throughout the globe.

Since
March, Ecuador has applied new pressure on Assange, beginning with
the withdrawal of Assange’s internet connection. Authorities claim
this move was in response to his “interference,” in the form of
comments on Spain’s repression of Catalonian independence advocates
and British accusations that Russia poisoned an ex-spy.

The move
also coincided with a visit by two top-level officials from U.S.
Southern Command to Quito for discussions to renew U.S.-Ecuador
security ties. These had largely been frozen following the 2009
shuttering of the U.S. Air Force base in the coastal city of Manta, a
major hub of U.S. espionage activity in the region.

Speaking
to Sputnik, veteran journalist John Pilger commented: “It’s
quite clear that this government has deferred to the United States …
But Ecuador is a tiny country, and in the historical pattern has been
pressured massively by the United States, which of course is working
its way right through the governments that might have challenged U.S.
interests in Latin America, from Venezuela to Argentina to Bolivia
and now to Ecuador.”

Beyond
Washington alone, Economist Intelligence Unit analyst Aristodimos
Iliopoulos told Bloomberg that the move is also meant to curry favor
with international financial institutions and extractive industries,
which hope to exploit Ecuador’s resources. Iliopoulos noted: “The
back story is that Ecuador wants to grow again by getting back into
the good graces of international investors in oil and mining
projects. So the wager might be that clamping down on Assange is seen
as a sign of good will.”

"The
smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit
the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate
within that spectrum." – Noam Chomsky

By
Manmeet Sahni

Part
4 - Fractured Opposition

In
December 2017, pro-opposition think tank Atlantic Council received
US$1million from the U.S. State Department to work with Venezuela's
"fractured opposition."

According
to the Miami Herald, the funds will help finance a year-long project
to "draw more international attention to the crisis, show the
public what Venezuela could look like under new leadership, and
provide the opposition and other stakeholders the tools needed to
work more cohesively together."

Jason
Marczak, director of the Atlantic Council's Adrienne Arsht Latin
America Center, told the Miami Herald: "What we're trying to
do is address the fractures within the opposition. That is then
helpful for the opposition's overall stance because what the
government wants is a divided opposition."

But
according to Alternet journalist Max Blumenthal, the Atlantic Council
is "a pro-regime-change think tank that is funded by Western
governments and their allies." It's also financed in part by
"Viktor Pinchuk, Ukrainian nationalist and longtime
friend/donor of the Clintons."

According
to Venezuelanalysis.com, this same council has pushed for "arming
Salafist militant groups against the Bashar Al-Assad regime in Syria
and lobbied for more militaristic policies toward Russia. In
Venezuela, the organization is intimately linked to the pro-United
States opposition."

Western
media often question the motives of non-traditional media trying to
portray Venezuela without bias, but rarely do they question the
motives of those opposing the Latin American nation.

For
instance, in February this year, the Wall Street Journal published a
story headlined 'Venezuela's Misery Fuels Migration on Epic Scale.'
The story quotes Tomas Paez, described as an immigration expert at
Venezuela's Central University, as saying: "Nearly 3 million
Venezuelans – a tenth of the population – have left the oil-rich
country over the past two decades of leftist rule. Almost half that
number – some 1.2 million people – have gone in the past two
years."

Venezuelanalysis.com
notes that in 2002 Paez signed his name to a quarter-page ad in the
Venezuelan newspaper El Nacional, welcoming Pedro Carmona – then
head of Venezuela's largest business federation – as the country's
new president after a U.S.-backed military coup briefly ousted
Chavez.

22 May, 2018

Ecuador’s
president, Lenín Moreno, shook up his cabinet and appointed six new
ministers this week. The move appears to confirm what many of his
critics on the Left have long suspected, which is that Moreno is
moving the country increasingly towards the Right. That is, they say
he is reversing the policies under the previous government, Rafael
Correa, who pursued a fairly progressive agenda, particularly in
foreign and economic affairs. For example, President Moreno’s new
Minister of the Economy, Richard Martinez, comes directly from the
country’s business class, where he worked as a consultant for the
Chamber of Industry and Production, and he also was president of
Ecuador’s Business Committee, which is the country’s main
business association.

Greg
Wilpert of the Real
News spoke with Guillaume Long, former Minister of
Foreign Affairs of Ecuador under former President Rafael Correa,
about the rapid turn of the new Ecuadorian administration towards
neoliberal policies, under Lenín Moreno.

Long
gave some impressive details about Moreno's actions so far, proving
that he acted like a US agent. His mission is to destroy Correa's
legacy and throw Ecuador into the hands of the US empire by
implementing destructive neoliberalism. This
is obviously
part of an ongoing operation through which the
US imperialist hawks seek to wipe out the last Leftist governments in
Latin America.
Moreno's
behavior made Long finally resign from his position.

As Long
said:

I felt
Moreno was moving more and more towards the Right, sort of had a
creeping conservative agenda that was becoming more and more
difficult to reconcile with.

What I
felt Moreno was doing, was kind of reintroducing the US in kind of
security and geopolitics and moving away from what we had espoused
during the Citizens’ Revolution, which was more kind of sovereign,
non-aligned foreign policy based on Latin American integration and
sort of an intelligence incursion in a multipolar world. And not just
this kind of return within the US kind of imperial fold.

So, I
felt that it wasn’t possible to be Moreno’s personal
representative in the UN anymore. There were a number of issues that
I disagreed with.

Moreno,
also, by January, had made it pretty clear that he wanted to
obliterate the legacy of his predecessor, Rafael Correa. I think
Moreno was elected in 2017 basically on a platform promising the
continuation of the Citizens’ Revolution, of Rafael Correa’s
political process. And so, I felt that there was a betrayal there. He
was obliterating it rhetorically. He was blaming everything on his
predecessor. But he was also organizing a referendum, which actually
occurred in February, attempting to bury the legacy of Correa and to
prevent Rafael Correa from ever coming back in Ecuador in politics.
One of the questions of the referendum was aimed at barring any type
of reelection.

The
situation has got significantly worse. There’s an even greater
departure from the legacy ten years of the Citizens’ Revolution of
Rafael Correa’s government. We’ve really gone Right-wing now.

The new
Minister of Economy and Finance, was actively involved in the
campaign of Moreno’s rival in the 2017 elections that Moreno won.
Moreno was elected against Guillermo Lasso - very, very neoliberal.
So, Moreno wasn’t the perfect candidate, but facing the threat of a
Lasso government we were all very anxious for his victory.

What
Moreno did over the next few months is, little by little, have people
from the Lasso camp coming to his government. He said this was all
about ‘dialogue’ and ‘being very inclusive.’ Being inclusive
and dialogue is a good thing, but he actually said at one point, in a
conversation with bankers, that he was very grateful for them. Those
are the words he employed. He was very grateful for them not having
voted for him and that he was very angry. He had actually used the
word hatred, ‘I have a lot of hatred for the people who voted for
me.’

It’s
taken him a year to get where he wanted to get to, which is to bring
the neoliberals on board to run the country. And this new Minister of
Economy and Finance, is a complete neoliberal, he is not a moderate
neoliberal. He’s a very radical neoliberal who believes in the
whole neoliberal recipe, which is the direct opposite of what we did
for ten years when we had a much more heterodox, a much more sort of
anti-austerity program, which allowed for growth, redistribution, for
the reduction of poverty, of inequality, and was very successful. I
think Ecuador was one of the most successful economic models in the
“pink tide” for Latin America for a long time.

Moreno’s
actions also explain why Ecuador actually starts to turn against
Julian Assange. From the impressive details given, it is obvious that
Moreno acts like a puppet of Washington who was seeking to sabotage
Ecuador's course towards Left under Rafael Correa. The whole story
and recent developments show that the ringer tightens around Julian
Assange and that under the traitor Moreno, Ecuador methodically
pushes him too into the hands of the US empire.

Recall
that recently, Rafael Correa, in an
exclusive
interview with the Intercept,
denounced his country’s current government’s decision
for blocking Julian Assange from
receiving visitors in its Embassy in London as a form of “torture”
and a violation of Ecuador’s duties to protect Assange’s safety
and well-being. Correa said this took place in the context of Ecuador
no longer maintaining “normal
sovereign relations with the American government — just
submission.”

Also,
Correa recently
told journalists in Madrid that Assange’s “days
were numbered” because Moreno, his former protégé, would
“throw him out of the embassy at the first pressure from the
United States.”